Chapter Text
Harrowhark Nonagesimus had a very unusual childhood. Unusual in the raised-by-vampire-hunters-to-be-a-vampire-hunter way, and unusual also in the way that she was a solemn little adult almost from the moment she became conscious that she was really a person, around age three or four.
Her earliest memories were her father and mother poring over old books, ancient vampire hunter texts handed down from their parents and the parents before them, all the way back as far as the Ninth line stretched. Allegedly, to the time of Jesus. Possibly before. Her second earliest memories were of her father and mother saying their sacred prayers of protection, putting on silver crosses, strapping silver knives to their thighs and wrists, arming themselves with stakes and guns (because silver bullets killed just as easily as a stake), and giving her the rare, dry-lipped kiss on her forehead before telling her firmly to be good and that they would return. And they always did, sometimes covered in blood (often their own), occasionally injured, once, spectacularly, with her mother missing a finger but otherwise unharmed.
As Harrowhark grew older, she became a sort of medic-librarian-vampire hunter, studying her parents’ books and organizing as she went into their massive library, patching them up every time they went out and came back injured with one less vampire – or many less vampires – in the world. She became quite good at first aid and quite knowledgeable about the practice and lore of vampire hunting as a result. She was devout. Practically the only times she left the house were to attend Mass weekly. She wore her crosses and went to sleep with prayers on her lips of locked tombs and bodies that stayed dead. Her earliest, most devout, and most often prayer: “I pray the tomb be locked forever, I pray the rock is never rolled away, I pray that which was buried remains buried…” Then she started on her Hail Marys.
When she was thirteen, Pelleamena and Priamhark took her on her first vampire hunt. They outfitted her in traditional gear, all-black with sturdy boots, silver weapons (including, for her times of direst need, a neat row of freshly pierced silver earrings from her lobe to her cartilage on both ears), a sturdy leather jacket to serve as body armor, and the traditional face-paint of the vampire hunter: a lurid, grinning skull.
“We deal death to the deathless,” Pelleamena said solemnly, wiping the grease paint across her daughter’s face. “You will become the greatest vampire hunter the Ninth House has ever seen.” Harrow sat still, unwilling to move a muscle, and realized that this was her transition into adulthood.
Hours later, she returned victorious with both parents. Exhausted, heart racing and limbs still shaking, she carried with her the dead heart of the first vampire she ever killed. It was to be preserved in an airtight glass box as tradition dictated. Priamhark and Pelleamena kept the preserved hearts of their first kills above their marital bed.
For several years, Harrow believed what her parents had said to be true wholeheartedly. It was evident that she was the greatest vampire hunter the Ninth had ever seen. She had youth, knowledge, skill, and the steady backup of both parents on her side. She had a hand that never faltered to stake the undead and a sixth sense that never failed to tell her just where a vampire, or nest of vampires, was hiding. She was an expert tracker. She was undefeated.
That is, until the only thing that could defeat her did: she lost her parents.
Although no one could charitably say they loved each other, the family had protected each other out of a generations-long commitment to finding and killing the undead. They had trained her to be an unstoppable vampire-killing machine, with them at her sides. She had always known that they would be killed eventually, was prepared for it even, ready for it to happen within the next decade – she was only nineteen and knew how human bodies tended to break down and become slower with age, and although Pelleamena and Priamhark had only been twenty-two when she was born, they were in their forties. She expected them to fall at the hands of a vampire she would stake a heartbeat later.
She did not expect it to happen in an instant, when she was so young, and by a vampire so powerful she was unable to get neither glimpse nor a name.
And she did not know why.
This was the beginning of the grief and rage-filled years for Harrowhark. Where she threw herself into her studies. She burned her parents’ corpses, far away from any soul living or undead, as hunter custom dictated. Harrow did not cry. She wondered if she could cry.
Letters came for her when the news of her parents’ deaths spread, from Abigail Pent and Magnus Quinn, records-keepers and armory-maintainers, inviting her to join their team of vampire hunters. With them came Camilla Hect and Palamedes Sextus, talented hunters slightly older than her who joined Abigail and Magnus after the death of their childhood friend to vampires. Inviting her to move into their home, bringing all her books, weapons, and knowledge. The books Harrow gave as a gift. But instead of moving in, she got a studio apartment in the heart of the city to live alone.
She kept everyone at arm’s length. She rarely spoke of her parents but studied their notes obsessively, pulling the oldest books from her family history to become better and better. She hunted down and killed every vampire that had the misfortune to cross her path. She became like a machine, and for a little while, she almost was.
Abigail Pent brought her new books in her austere little studio apartment, Tupperwares full of spaghetti and casseroles and half-loaves of bread that her husband baked, furniture that wasn’t bookshelves or the bed that Harrow had brought from her parents’ home. Blankets, warm blankets, because Harrow kept her apartment cold as a tomb year-round. Persistent invitations round her home for dinner. Harrow began to take them.
She found an intellectual companion in Palamedes, and a training companion in Camilla, though she rarely said much that wasn’t directly relevant to their studies or their fights. She still remained withdrawn in her shell, closed off. Nights, she obsessively chased the answers the sought in her parents’ research and notes on vampires, poring over their journals, their letters to one another. She wanted to be better, be stronger, to avenge them. So that their deaths wouldn’t be in vain. The Nonagesimus fortune, large in the times of her grandparents and great-grandparents, began to wear thin. Harrow worried that she might have to hire her talents out, or worse, get a day job.
“Come on a hunt with us,” Camilla said abruptly one day after training. “Pal and me. We need a third set of eyes on the Tridentarius nest.” Harrow looked up, surprised. “Abigail and Magnus are not cut out for this type of hunt. I’ll get straight to the point. We know you’ve been hunting alone, and we know how many kills you’ve racked up. Two hundred or more by twenty-one, Harrow, that’s no small number. I want you to watch my back on this hunt. And more afterwards, if we succeed.” Harrow looked at her, held her gaze for a long moment.
“Tell me more,” she said, and relaxed a small amount further into Camilla’s company. “About the Tridentarius clan.”
“Over supper,” Camilla promised. “With Abigail, Magnus, and Pal.” Harrow nodded.
Magnus was a superb chef and well-in-tune to the needs of hungry, active vampire hunters. Lots of lean protein, carbs, and vegetables, food to build muscle. As usual, Harrow ate the exact bare minimum to maintain her body and not a bite more. He had prepared potatoes with rosemary and garlic, roasted until brown and crispy, chicken cooked in a lemon-wine sauce, as many green vegetables as anyone wanted, and a heaping basket of beautiful brown rolls. Harrow carefully scraped most of the sauce off a piece of chicken and seven small potato pieces before placing them beside one unbuttered roll and ten green beans. An exact science.
“Harrowhark is sustained mostly by her burning hatred for vampires,” Abigail needled, but kindly, slipping a few more green beans and another potato on her plate. “But even the most devoted among us need to eat.” She filled her own plate, spooning the thin sauce across her meal, and passing the breadbasket to Magnus, who was known to never skimp on the fruits of his labor. He kissed her lightly on the cheek as thanks.
“So – about this hunt,” Harrow said, swallowing a piece of chicken. “Tridentarius. What do we know?” She was suddenly brutally aware that she was the youngest person at the table by several years, and that she was strikingly alone. Seeing Camilla and Palamedes, and Abigail and Magnus together, sometimes made her feel that way.
“We know about the leader – Ianthe. We got word about her last month. The last one we killed knew something.” Palamedes toyed with the crucifix at his throat. “It’s gotten to the point where we have to take her out now if we want any chance of ever taking her out. She’s getting stronger – more people have gone missing in the last month than the whole past year combined. I thought we would have more time before we faced a nest like this, but I was wrong. Your parents took out some impressive nests of their own in their day.” Harrow inclined her head briefly at their memory.
“How many are in her number?”
“We’re not sure,” Abigail began, “but Magnus and I have been charting and calculating how many vampires would be feeding from the number of reported missing persons cases within the last ninety days, and we’re thinking it’s not just two or three. At least ten. Maybe more.” A nest of three was a marked threat to any hunter, even talented hunters like Camilla, Palamedes, and Harrow, but a nest of ten was formidable indeed. “The good news is that at least five are newborn, likely not as dangerous as the older ones.”
“I think it’s likely that Ianthe is building an army,” Magnus said, “and we’re already outnumbered. We need to act soon. This week, if possible.” Camilla sucked her teeth loudly.
“This week? You aren’t kidding,” she said with a short, sharp laugh. “I knew Tridentarius would be a bitch, but I didn’t know you were this serious.”
Palamedes looked down his nose through his glasses. “I’m not sure we’re going to be ready by the end of this week.”
“We’re going to have to,” Magnus said. “Or else we might not get another chance. She’s building an army.”
“So be it, then,” he said, reaching for another piece of chicken. “We’ll have to be ready.”
“Have some more potatoes, Harrow.” Harrow did not want any more potatoes, but she forced down a few bites for Abigail’s sake.
“Fine,” Camilla said. “I’d rather be done with this sooner than later.”
“What’s the plan?” Harrow asked. “What do you need me to do?”
“Like I said before, I need you to watch our backs. Abigail and Magnus will be staying behind to direct us in logistics. They’ll be on the phones and the cameras. We’ll all have earpieces, and they can tell us if things are about to go south.”
“Eyes and ears,” Magnus added. “If everything goes smoothly, you’ll hardly even need us.”
“We’re going to ambush the den at eleven in the morning to give us time until high noon, if need be.” High noon. The time of day when vampires were at their weakest. It made sense. “We need you to stand guard at the mouth of the nest once we go in. We’ll try to drive them out towards the mouth, and you’ll be waiting at the entrance. We’ll be right behind them. It should be as easy as trapping rabbits, only with longer teeth.” Abigail laughed lightly at her own little joke. “But we’ll need to have strength in numbers if we want to pull this off. And good fighters, too.”
“When?” Harrow put her elbows on the table and leaned forward.
“Hopefully, in three days. Sooner, if we can.”
“I’m ready now,” she said, determined. “Whenever you are.”
-
Three days later, Harrow rose early for her morning prayers. She prayed the rosary, just as her parents taught her, the Hail Marys and Our Fathers dropping from her lips like second nature while she stretched. She polished her silver daggers and strapped them to her legs, the worn leather reminding her that they used to be her mother’s. Harrow wore several pieces of her parents’ hunting gear. She had gone over their belongings after their deaths, taking what she knew would fit her, that she would use. It’s what they would have wanted, she rationalized. They would have wanted to equip her with the best. And anyway, it was the closest she’d ever gotten to love from them – Pelleamena teaching her how to wield daggers and stakes, Priamhark guiding her hands in prayer. She knew the names of saints as well as she knew the names of the bones that moved under her skin, better than second nature.
She dressed mindlessly, first a high-necked tight shirt that covered her to her chin, then sturdy black pants, solid, worn boots, a slim vest for added padding, all her various weapons and the two pistols at her hip – solid black things, one belonging to each of her parents – and then finally her leather jacket and gloves. She pulled her fingers through her short black hair. It was almost time to shave it back down, she thought idly. Finally, offering up her final prayers to God, she slicked on the paint that was almost more important than the protective layers of clothing she wore. A mark of who she was, and where she came from. None of the other hunters wore it, but she kept to the old ways.
Harrow left her apartment and walked the two blocks to Abigail and Magnus’ small house, greeting those waiting inside with a terse nod. There was breakfast, and she gingerly allowed Magnus to fill her plate; she would need her strength for the coming fight. She still felt, privately, that she knew too little about this hunt to be moving so fast.
“Did you sleep well, Harrowhark?” Palamedes asked. “I slept like the undead. I always sleep well before a hunt.”
“Yes,” she replied tersely. “I’m fine.” White-knuckled, she gripped her father’s rosary in the pocket of her jacket.
“Are we ready?” Camilla asked, coming down the steps. She had a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, and Harrow supposed it was full of weapons. “I’m driving,” she said. Just as well. Harrow had never bothered to get her license.
The car was tight, especially with weapons. Harrow had to sit in the middle. Of fucking course Camilla Hect would own a Prius.
The nest was far from the city by their standards, thirty miles out. Some vampires chose to set up farther away and travel because it was less likely they’d be caught, and their meals traced back to them. Others preferred to be immediately in the city, skulking in the poorest parts of town where no one looked too close at the missing persons list. Harrow preferred the vampires that lived in the city, partially because she relied upon public transit or her own two feet to get around, and partially because she knew they were often less cunning and more desperate. Easier to kill a starving vampire than a smart, well-fed vampire.
The Tridentarius vampires were definitely not starving.
They parked Camilla’s Prius in the back of a small store, and Camilla went inside to greet the owner. After a few minutes, she came back out with a black duffel bag. Opening it up, she began to pass out more silver bullets in various sizes.
“The storekeeper tipped me off about the nest,” she said. “He used to hunt, but he’s getting too old, he said. This was the least he could do to help us. He’s retired now, runs a little armory for people like us out of the back of his store.”
“Give him our thanks,” Palamedes said, sliding the clip into a semiautomatic rifle that he slung over his shoulder. Harrow took a box of silver 9mm bullets and put them into the pouch at her waist. If she needed more than fifty bullets plus whatever was in her magazines for ten vampires, she would be a very bad – and then very dead – vampire hunter indeed.
“According to him, the nest is just a mile into the woods,” Camilla said, pulling out a folded map. “Should actually be right down the trail, and then off it for several hundred feet.”
“Let’s get this over with quick,” Palamedes said, loading bullets into a revolver, then holstering it at his hip. Beside her, Camilla was inspecting a long, curved silver knife.
“Harrow, you remember the plan?” Camilla checked. “Let’s check in with Abigail and Magnus before we start.” Their earpieces crackled to life as they turned them on one-by-one.
“This is Palamedes.”
“Camilla Hect, checking in.”
“Harrowhark.”
“We read you all loud and clear, this is Abigail – “
“– and this is Magnus. No issues on our end. Are you all armed and ready?” Harrow placed her hands on her two pistols, ready to draw at a moment’s notice. She felt her rosary beads on the inside of her shirt pressing against her collarbones and sent up a quick prayer just in case God was watching over her. Or more likely St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. Or maybe no one at all.
As they walked, silently, Harrow couldn’t shake the feeling that she, specifically, was being watched. Not that they were being watched, but that someone was following her. It was only a half hour’s walk at their pace to the nest, and like always, the hunters could smell the old blood before they could see the nest. The mouth of what was once an abandoned house or cabin loomed. It was deceptively small, but Harrow knew that there was always more than meets the eye to a vampire nest. It was doubtless bigger on the inside.
“Get down,” Camilla whispered. “Positions.” She drew her twin blades. Everyone else readied themselves.
“It’s a go from our end,” said Abigail through the earpieces. “and may God make your aim true.”
In several fluid moments, Palamedes and Camilla entered the nest without a sound, leaving Harrow as guard to the entrance. The youngest vampire hunter drew both pistols and set up guard: one pointed into the dark mouth of the nest, and the other pointed out into the forest. She heard muffled shouting, and several rapid shots – mostly good, encouraging signs, proof that her friends were still alive – and settled into a defensive stance, widening her hips and bending her knees.
Then she felt an approaching presence and had only a moment’s warning with a flurry of snapping branches and twigs before a tall, blonde, pale vampire was coming at her. She fired blindly toward her target, but the woman was too fast. She was behind Harrow, wrenching her head back by her short black hair – God, Harrow really should have shaved her head again before this fight – and Harrow thought that this was really the end for her, and was briefly embarrassed by how slow she was, but instead, the vampire whispered in her ear:
“Do you know who I am?”
“I’ll kill you, you creature,” Harrow swore, bringing her pistol up to the vampire’s head, but she laughed, batting it away like a cat with a toy. Harrow drew the silver knife from her thigh holster and stabbed the flesh behind her. An angry, pained cry – she had found purchase. The vampire released her hair and leapt back.
“What’s going on?” Abigail’s panicked voice in her earpiece. “Harrow?” Harrow ignored her.
“For that, I’ll kill you slower than I killed your parents,” she teased. “Little Harrowhark Nonagesimus. I’ve been watching you, and I wondered when you’d come for me.”
“What?” Harrow gasped. The blonde vampire threw back her head and laughed.
“And you didn’t even know. I can’t believe they didn’t tell you.”
“Tridentarius, you bitch,” Harrow said, and fired her other pistol, missing by a half as the vampire stepped lazily to the side.
“Too slow,” she said. “You’ll never measure up to their legacy. You know they killed hundreds of us? And you come to me barely out of childhood thinking you’re strong enough and brave enough and smart enough to kill me. And you don’t even know my first name. Well, I’ve got a surprise for you – your own death.”
She ran at Harrow, breathtakingly fast, and somehow Harrow managed to slash her knife up in time to cut the vampire’s forearm as her pistol was knocked from her hand. She began to bleed sluggishly, and a few strands of her pin-straight blonde hair fell out of place over her eyes. With terrifying speed, the vampire was forcing her to her knees, claw-like hands at the back of her neck, drawing blood in small half-moons.
“Little girl,” she laughed, “I’ve just thought of a better fate for you.” She smiled wide, revealing a mouth full of fangs. “I’m going to make you into my vampire pet, and then you’ll never die.” Faintly, Harrow could hear Palamedes and Camilla’s shouts and Magnus over the earpiece, encouraging them all to fight. As long as the battle went well inside the nest, they could come out and kill this vampire, even if it meant Harrow had to die. Even if it meant they had to put a bitten Harrow down before she resurrected and burn her body to ash. She was ready. Her head was forced lower, and her neck exposed even as she struggled against it, unarmed.
“I want you to die and know that the name of your death is Ianthe Tridentarius, and that your God isn’t coming to save you,” Ianthe sneered, and with that, went for Harrow’s bare neck.
Before she could even pierce the skin, however, something – or someone – huge and a blur of several colors, red-headed, descended on the both of them, with some kind of angry shout, and Ianthe Tridentarius was dealing a savage kick to Harrow’s head as she collided with the attacker, and darkness fell over her.
Before she passed out, Harrow began to pray: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee… and knew no more.